Section
5(1) of that Act requires either a referendum
to be carried by a majority of the electors on the
ACT electoral roll, or a special majority vote of
two-thirds of all the members of the Legislative
Assembly, before any of the provisions that entrench
the key provisions of the Territory’s Hare-Clark
system can be repealed.

The
plebiscite and the referendum were each carried by
65% of the vote, which was a majority of those on
the ACT electoral roll.

The Liberal Party promised the referendum before the
2001 elections,
where it won 77 of the 79 seats

(97%),
based on just over 57 % of the vote.

The proposal fordirect-electionproportional representation, known as
BC-STV, won just over 57% of the overall vote, and
majorities in 77 of the province's 79 electorates,
i.e.97% of the electorates.

Unfortunately the referendum result
was not binding, as it would have been had it met
the statutory requirement for a 60% overall vote. The Liberal
Government, returned in 2005 with 46
of the 79 seats (58%), based on only 45.8% of the
vote, has determined that it will hold another
identical referendum in May 2009, after the BC
Electoral Commission has set notional boundaries for
a multi-member system, in order to show voters how
such a new system would operate in practice. The 57%
referendum result was a much higher vote than that
45.8% vote that the government party received,
entitling it to its full law-making power.

The
second referendum in May 2009 unfortunately showed a
reversal in support for the PR option, and it failed,
but it still achieved a higher percentage vote than
either of the failed MMP plebiscites below.

Not
surprisingly, the two referendums in Canadian
provinces proposing a Mixed Member Proportional
system (MMP) like New Zealand’s
failed dismally. They showed that the existing
single-member system - which was the only
alternative presented - to be markedly more popular,
with only 36% for MMP in Prince Edward
Island province in 2005, and 37% for
MMP in Ontario province
in 2007. In Ontario, MMP received a
majority vote in less than 5% of the province’s 107
electorates, which contrasts sharply with British
Columbia, where 97% of electorates preferred the
Hare-Clark type of single transferable vote
proposed.

NEW
ZEALAND:
Following a Royal Commission that recommended MMP,
and a non-preferential plebiscite that included MMP,
quota-preferential PR, and two other options, a 1993 referendum
replaced the single-member electorate
system used for NZ's unicameral Parliament with a Mixed Member
Proportional system.
It gives overall party proportionality, but is quite
inferior to Hare-Clark,
as most MPs are elected in single-member districts.
The rest are elected indirectly from party lists.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: The 1959 referendum
that the Government under Eamon
de Valera held to replace the requirement in Article
16.2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland
for a proportional representation electoral system
using the single transferable vote with a
requirement instead for a single-member electoral
system with each voter having a single
non-transferable vote (first-past-the-post)
showed 51.79% for PR.

The only
attempt since then, at a similar 1968 referendum,
showed 60.84% for PR. In that 1968 referendum, the
Government referred to the proposed reversion to
single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post
voting, by means of the euphemism “straight vote”,
but that did not prevent the 17% increase in the
vote for PR compared with the 1959 referendum.
Subsequent governments have wisely not revisited the
issue.